History Trivia / BandOfBrothers

* AwesomeDearBoy: Nearly all of the cast members jumped at the chance to play World War II veterans, enduring the grueling ten day boot camp and (for the Americans) relocating to England for nine months - just to work with Creator/TomHanks and Creator/StevenSpielberg. Most of them list it as one of their favourite roles.

** Forty of the main cast members endured a ten day boot camp to prepare them for their roles. During this time they had to refer to each other by their character names, as well as proper rank. For the non-American actors, they had to speak in American accents and slang words (and were punished for not doing so).

* RomanceOnTheSet: Sort of. Creator/NealMcDonough was in England to film the series at the same time as his future wife, Ruve. They have been married since 2003 and have five children.

* PlayingWithCharacterType: Captain Sobel is essentially [[Series/{{Friends}} Ross Geller's]] negative personality traits (pettiness, [[NeverMyFault refusal to take responsibility for his actions]], being a KnowNothingKnowItAll) taken UpToEleven with none of his positive traits.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: An odd example since it is a period piece. But the interview segments date it to 2001. For example in the first episode, one of the real veterans tries to rationalise why so many people enlisted voluntarily - saying "our country was attacked". The September 11th attacks happened two days after the episode premiered. The WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue speaks about the men who were still alive at the time of filming but have since passed on. What's more is that there are a few historical mistakes that come from testimony among the men - such as Joe Liebgott being Jewish (he was Catholic in real life) and Albert Blithe dying in 1948 (he lived until 1967) - which shows the miniseries was made in a pre-internet age when information like that would be harder to find.

Trivia page for the TV series ''Series/BandOfBrothers''

In what seems to be a combination of DueToTheDead, TheDeadHaveNames, NeverSpeakIllOfTheDead, ShrineToTheFallen, and other remembrance tropes, cable networks show the series without any edits to or censorship of the graphic nature of war or the horrors of the concentration camps.

** Peter Youngblood Hills is part Cherokee, just like the real Shifty Powers. He was also from the same area of Virginia as the real Shifty.

* AwesomeDearBoy: Nearly all of the cast members jumped at the chance to play World War II veterans and they endured the gruelling ten day boot camp and (for the Americans) relocated to England for nine months - just to work with Creator/TomHanks and Creator/StevenSpielberg. Most of them list it as one of their favourite roles.

** Neal [=McDonough=] is frequently asked by fans to say "I'm Buck Compton baby" - something Buck never says during the miniseries. Neal himself says it during the ''Ron Livingston Video Diaries'' after returning from the hospital.
** The "company of heroes" quote is sometimes wrongly attributed to Dick Winters. While he's the one who delivers it in the ending interviews, he's quoting his friend Mike Ranney. It's Ranney who had the conversation with his grandson, not Winters.
* CaliforniaDoubling: Most of the series was filmed in Hertfordshire, England, with production building a town used to portray Bastogne, Eindhoven, Landsburg and Carentan from scratch in an abandoned airfield. If you watch closely you can see some of the same buildings being used for multiple scenes in different towns. The scenes that took place in Austria and Berchtesgarten, Germany were filmed in Switzerland.

* CastTheRunnerUp: The actors all read for many different parts and did a mix and match audition to see who they would play. For example Matthew Settle auditioned for Nixon, James Madio auditioned for Guarnere, Donnie Wahlberg auditioned for Speirs, Richard Speight Jr auditioned for Malarkey etc.

** Rick Warden (Harry Welsh) said he found the boot camp especially tough and gruelling that he nearly walked out.

** Inverted for Liebgott. Historically, he is supposed to be older than most of the others in Easy Company (he was thirty-two by the time he was discharged at the end of the war), but Creator/RossMcCall (twenty-four during filming) was one of the younger actors on set. Also inverted for Philip Barantini (Skinny) who was seventeen playing a twenty-one-year-old. Matt Hickey (O'Keefe) was only sixteen too.

** Fifty of the main cast members endured a ten day boot camp to prepare them for their roles. During this time they had to refer to each other by their character names, as well as proper rank. For the non-American actors, they had to speak in American accents and slang words (and were punished for not doing so).
** Shane Taylor was also expected to act as a medic during the boot camp. While it was going on, Neal [=McDonagh=]'s weapon went off and a shard of it cut his chin. He went to Taylor, expecting him to patch it up since he was playing the medic.

** Frank John Hughes was rather infamous for it. Robin Lang stated that as soon as he found out he was playing Babe Heffron, he took him under his wing just as Guarnere had done for the real Babe. Mark Huberman (Les Hashey) joked that when the real Guarnere visited the set, he asked him what he thought of the real Hashey. And that when Guarnere replied that he didn't like him, Hughes did not speak to him again for the rest of production (though he claims Hughes did assure him it was for the sake of method acting). He even carved 'Fran' into his weapon because that had been the name of Guarnere's wife.

* SeparatedAtBirthCasting: This was the intent of producers, casting most of the men based on their resemblances to their real-life counterparts. It's especially evident with Matthew Settle (Speirs), Frank John Hughes (Guarnere), Donnie Wahlberg (Lipton), Rick Gomez (Luz), Ross [=McCall=] (Liebgott) and Shane Taylor (Doc Roe).
** Don Malarkey wrote in his memoir that when he met the cast, he bonded immediately with Richard Speight Jr., who played Malarkey's close friend Warren "Skip" Muck, because Speight's physical, vocal, and personal resemblance to the real Skip Muck was downright uncanny.

** While they're not necessarily stars Creator/NealMcDonough, Creator/MichaelCudlitz, Creator/RossMcCall, Donnie Wahlberg, Creator/ScottGrimes and Creator/EionBailey all had their careers launched by appearing in the miniseries. Or 'acting career' in the case of Wahlberg at least, who was fairly well-known as a pop musician at this point.

** While they're not necessarily stars Creator/NealMcDonough, Creator/MichaelCudlitz, Creator/RossMcCall, Donnie Wahlberg, Creator/ScottGrimes and Creator/EionBailey all had their careers launched by appearing in the miniseries.